Apple's education event just ended, and just as Ars Technica said, Apple announced better support for textbooks, as well as a textbook authoring tool. The textbook authoring tool is heavily inspired by Keynote and Pages, and hence, I already know it's going to be top-notch and very pleasant to use. In addition, the company also repositioned iTunes U as a Blackboard competitor. As great as all these new tools are, several large red flags went up in my mind: I remember what it was like being the only student who didn't use Windows. Update: "Any e-textbook author that wants access to the iPad-toting masses must make his or her work an exclusive to iBooks 2."

Pictures, as you mention, are already a core part of the book business. Children books and comics are fundamentally based on pictures, high school textbooks tend to feature a fair share of them, and even "serious" litterature from the former centuries used to feature a few black and white illustrations to make their point.

What I'm trying to say is that websites were initially designed to be better books. It took years of evolution for web technologies to reach their modern, distinct state. Perhaps it's a part of normal litterature evolution that future "books" will in turn start to feature web-like features, just like many video cameras feature dual sensors for 3D shooting nowadays.

I totally agree that this technology overflow does not suit every use case. Content should not always attempt to use every single available feature. Traditional writing based on pure, weakly formatted text will probably continue to exist, as it is best for some content. And I'd also like a cheap A4 minimalist ereader to exist for the specific purpose of reading manuals and scientific papers. But would it be such a bad thing for multiple media to converge in a more unified direction, creating new forms of content in the way ?